The present invention relates generally to agricultural machinery and, more particularly, to improvements to harvesting machines for agricultural crops.
Some harvesting machines are self-propelled and have a cutterbar, or mowing unit, and a locating device to scan the crop edge for steering orientation. Such a harvesting machine is disclosed in German Patent application 24 55 836. This harvesting machine scans the crop edge within a certain distance via a reflex position locator, either by means of light beams or ultrasonic waves, without physical contact in front of the cutterbar. However, in the harvesting process the automatic steering mechanism of the afore-mentioned harvesting machine has led to irregular tracks and non-uniform crop edges. Furthermore, during operation of the harvesting machine on a hillside, the hill drift-away effect of the automatically-steerable harvesting machine is not sufficiently compensated.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome one or more of the above-described deficiencies. Another object is to improve the aforementioned harvesting machine by producing a rugged and more reliable automatic steering mechanism for harvesting machines.